Lessons from 40 Years of War
Peter Urban, 5 mar 2010
The recent decision by the Irish National Liberation Army to decommission its weapons provides occasion to draw some of the lessons learned in the more than 40 years that a republican socialist paramilitary body—either the INLA, since December 1974, or earlier the Official Irish Republican Army and Saor Eire—was active in waging armed struggle in Ireland. Learning these lessons is essential to ensuring that the path taken forward from this point in history does not falter and err and the need for ensuring that is all the greater now that world-wide capitalism has been exposed to still be reeling from the chaos intrinsic to that system.
The War is Never Over, Until We Succeed or CivilizationFalls
While any organisation has the right to call a halt to its own use of armed force, no organisation has either the right or the ability to call a halt to the use of armed force either within the national liberation or class struggle still be waged in Ireland. So long as British occupation continues to be a cause for sectarian social divisions in both the six and 26 county statelets of Ireland and that occupation and corresponding sectarians continues to result in a threat to the nationalist community of the six counties, there will be an armed struggle waged in Ireland. It may not be effective or well conducted; it may not enjoy broad popular support within the nationalist community; but it will continue. Moreover, the efforts of a nation oppressed and exploited by imperialism to end its occupation by a foreign entity through armed struggle must be defended, even by those who do not choose to employ the tactic of armed struggle at present. The republican socialist position on the use of arms, annunciated by the IRSP repeatedly, is that armed struggle is a tactical decision, not a matter of principles. The use of arms does not render a political entity ‘correct’, in and of itself and the ability to set aside the use of armed struggle for tactical reasons has long been the perspective of Irish republican socialists. However, in that the use of armed force is understood to be a tactical decision, its use cannot be reasonably declared ended for all time, because no one has the ability to anticipate the social conditions within which the struggle will be waged. Therefore, republican socialists, whether actively pursuing armed struggle, on cease-fire, or decommissioned must continue to defend the right of the Irish working class to choose the tactic of armed struggle in its fight against British imperialism.
Further, because the State always has a specific class character—that of the ruling class—the working class cannot permit the State to maintain a monopoly on the use of armed force. To the extent that the bourgeois State can be pressured to reduce its own reliance on armed force (prohibition of capital punishment, unarmed police patrols, neutrality and foregoing the maintenance of a standing army, etc.), the working class can also refrain for the use of armed force to some extent, for the purpose of ensuring social conditions that are most conducive to working people feeling free from threat and in which reason, rather than brute force, can be employed as a method of struggle. That, however, is not the present circumstance in Ireland, either in the six or 26 counties. Instead, both the Free State and the British government maintain standing armies on the island of Ireland and armed police operate throughout all 32 counties; and the governments of the six and 26 counties have both shown their willingness to use brute force to quash demonstrations, break strikes, pursue international policy decisions, repress republican and socialist activists, and so forth. Thus the Irish working class would be nothing less than irresponsible, were it to deny itself the same tactical options available to its class enemies. How extra-legal force might be used in pursuit of the class struggle on a day-to-day basis will be explored in greater depth later, but at present it must simply be reiterated that any political organisation presenting itself as operating in accordance with the revolutionary needs of Irish workers in their fight with the British imperialists, native capitalists, and the States which operate to serve their interests must recognize that class struggle is the motive force in human history and that struggle necessitates that the working class seek to stand on, at least, level ground when it confronts its class rivals and that means force used by the State must be opposed with force by the working class.
The Class Struggle and National Liberation Struggle in Ireland are Inseparable
The header used above forms the very core of what is known as a ‘republican socialist’ analysis in Ireland. From Fintan Lalor, through J.P. McDonnell of the First International; to Connolly and Larkin, Peadar O Donnell, Seamus Costello, and Gino Gallagher down to the present day, the republican socialist position has been distinguished on the basis of recognizing the inseparability of the class and national struggles in Ireland. Because this is true, the national liberation struggle cannot be waged distinctly from the class struggle.
The traditional republican strategy, employed by the Provisional IRA and now being pursued by the Continuity IRA, Real IRA, and Oglaich na Eireann is the pursuit of armed struggle with the intention of forcing the British government to the negotiating table, where Irish independence and 32-county unity can be achieved. From a republican socialist perspective, this is a strategy which cannot but fail. Irish national liberation can only be achieved through the liberation of the Irish working class from capitalist exploitation, because discussion of national liberation while the vast majority of the nation’s residents remain oppressed and unfree is an absurdity and because in the era of imperialism, no small capitalist nation is capable of pursuing an agenda designed to serve the interests of that nation, because the interests of the ruling class are directly tied to the interests of the ruling classes of the imperialist nations. Simply put, the British and Irish governments are not going to—now, tomorrow, or ever—sit down with representatives of the revolutionary forces in Ireland and negotiate the creation of a socialist republic. Moreover, Irish republican socialists have been clear in stating repeatedly over the course of decades that there can be no stagist approach to the Irish revolutionary struggle—it is not a case of ‘first national liberation, then socialism’ nor of ‘first socialist revolution, then national liberation’; Irish national liberation can be achieved only through the establishment of a 32-county Irish workers’ republic.
Because republican socialists understand this to be the case, the manner in which they should employ the use of arms or extra-legal force should be very different from traditional republicans; as an old friend and comrade recently said to me regarding the history of the IRSM: “We should have been fighting the class war.”
To some extent, the IRSM did just that and, when I was serving as the North American Coordinator of the IRSCNA and Co-International Secretary of the IRSP, I frequently drew upon the examples of the Mt. Gabriel radar station bombing (which had exposed the Free State violating its declared neutrality to provide intelligence to NATO), the hoax bombing used to disrupt a football match featuring a team from the Zionist state (which was intended to both “normalise” the image of the six counties and create an opening for the Zionists in international sports, which they had been excluded from due to political boycotts), the Dunnes store bombing done in support of the anti-apartheid struggle, and the hijacking of a bread van and the distribution of its contents to the working poor of Dublin (after the Free State removed its bread subsidies). All of these actions were generally well received by Irish workers and served to aid in the development of class consciousness; but as time went on, it became increasing obvious that these were only a few of the INLA’s actions and they had mostly occurred in the 1980s. The assassination of Airey Neave, the Drop-in Well bombing, the killing of John McKeage and Billy Wright were all fully defensible actions that served the class struggle through defense of nationalist workers from sectarian death squads, targeting of political figures likely to aid the reactionary cause, or support to the national liberation struggle and, as such, should have been undertaken by the INLA. However, actions with clear roots in the class struggle and which, to the extent possible, avoid the spilling of blood unless it serves a clear and immediate purpose were the kind of actions that only the INLA was suited to carry out and because only they were suited to the task, far too few such actions can be found in the 36 years of its history, prior to decommissioning.
Such clearly defined class war actions are not a diversion from the national liberation struggle; they are an integral element of the national liberation struggle. Again, that is because the reality of the struggle for national liberation in Ireland is that it is inseparable from the class struggle. Actions such as those described above assist Irish working people to enhance the class consciousness, aid Irish workers in grasping the importance of being prepared to employ revolutionary force to combat the state and the capitalist class it represents, and help to overcome the sectarian divide within the Irish working class by demonstrating that those engaged in the national liberation struggle embrace values that are meaningful to Protestant workers because of their own interests as members of the working class. Moreover, they accomplish these essential tasks of the Irish revolution far better than does another bombing disruption of the Dublin/Belfast rail link or the assassination of a random British soldier, who has probably never considered his role in supporting the continuation of imperialist exploitation of Ireland.
Accordingly, it this kind of action that should continue. It is not necessary that the revolutionaries engaged in such actions organise themselves into a body identified as the Irish National Liberation Army, or any other name. It is not essential that such actions be “claimed.” It is essential, however, that they continue. Ideally, the INLA would have remained fully underground, as had been intended at the time it was formed, on the same day the Irish Republican Socialist Party came into being. It was only because of the reactionary violence initiated by the OIRA against the newly formed IRSM that necessitated the acknowledgement of an armed wing of that movement and, even then, this was initially masked behind the “People’s Liberation Army” name. In those days, when the INLA introduced the basic three-volunteer cell structure that enabled them to withstand the onslaught of the British tactics such as the “hooded men” and various other elements of torture employed in the mid-1970s, the INLA understood that an underground organisation functions best when it is furthest underground. It was the model of traditional republicanism, not the innovations of the Republican Socialist Movement that resulted in the INLA assuming a posture far more closely related to the PIRA and the lesson of those times is essential to be learned: every revolutionary organisation should have both legal and illegal apparatus, but the illegal apparatus should function underground, where its activities are hardest for the British imperialists and Free State lackeys to identify and infiltrate them.
In this, the environmental activists of North America and internationally have provided a useful model. While the US FBI drones endlessly on about the threat that exists from the Animal Liberation Front and Environmental Liberation Front, their statements hide the reality that no such entities exist, in the sense recognized by Irish republicans. Rather, small teams of revolutionary activists employ those monikers as terms of convenience when carrying out illegal actions; but there is no ALF or ELF ‘Chief of Staff’ or ‘Army Council’. There is only the threatening shadow of an organisation, whose continued success is enhanced by the inability of state intelligence forces to identify structures, leadership, and membership. Were there a new campaigned aimed at combating the assault on Irish workers in the six counties represented by the efforts to privatise and charge for water—in addition to the already existing charges that have existed for years within the structure of rates—those responsible for destroying water meters; seizing, over-turning, and setting fire to the vans used by those reading those meters; or issuing threats against the RUC/PSNI should they attempt to make arrests based on refusal of working people to pay water charges; they might seize upon the wonderful name created by Welsh revolutionaries in the early 1980s and call themselves the ‘Workers’ Army of the Irish Republic’ (the Workers’ Army of the Welsh Republic had the added advantage that their acronym, WAWR, is the Welsh word for “dawn”, but no one should try to match the Welsh in their command of poetics) or the Army of the Irish Workers’ Republic. If they do (no credit need be given), they should first understand that it is not necessary that doing so first requires the holding of a founding Army Convention and the establishment of a leadership chain of command; they need only be self-consciously acting in concert with the aspirations of an Irish republican socialist movement. Organisations that lack formal organizational structures are organisations that the intelligence forces of British imperialism and Free State comprador capitalism cannot infiltrate and disrupt, but they are no less adept at providing a means for enhancing working class consciousness among Irish workers and serving as an effective means of combating an anti-working class campaign, such as the drive to privatise water resources represents.
Moreover, this is by no means the only current social struggle that lends itself to the use of armed force. In the 1970s the Italian Red Brigades provided useful support to striking Fiat workers with their weapons and every instance where there is an attempt to break a strike with scab labour provides another such opportunity. The actions of the masses in Haiti and Chile in the wake of their deadly earthquakes in seizing supplies necessary to workers’ survival illustrates another such example and was foreshadowed in the 1980s INLA bread van hijacking in Dublin. Where there are slum lords preying upon working people, there is an opportunity for such actions. Where working class women and children are made the victims of domestic violence, there are such opportunities. Where immigrant workers from Eastern Europe or Africa in Ireland, or Travelers, are subjected to racist attack and intimidation, there are such opportunities. Whenever and wherever social need makes evident the righteousness of immediate redistribution of wealth, not through government programs but through the manner popularized by that worthy Englishman, Robin Hood, such opportunities exist.
Republican socialists are either revolutionaries or they are nothing. When I first inquired of the IRSM’s leadership about the relationship between the party and the army, I was told that any member of the former would be expected to understand the necessity of armed struggle in Ireland and any member of the latter would be expected to understand the necessity of organised political action. I didn’t require a translator to understand what I was being told and that remained my guiding principle throughout my over two-decades within the IRSM. Because of the essential correctness of that perspective, it can naturally be presumed that a republican socialist party would be able and prepared to annunciate the goals and aspirations of activists engaged in illegal activity in support of working class needs and to provide rhetorical support for those engaged in such activities in their press and party statements; thereby rendering it unnecessary for the actual activist who carried out the illegal actions to emerge from the underground to issue press statements. By enabling those activists to remain underground, the efforts of the political organisation also provide them with essential protection from the efforts of the state intelligence forces to crush them.
Since the INLA has chosen to decommission its weapons, it has necessitated that other revolutionaries will step into the breach and to provide the forms of struggle the working class has always had occasion to employ. Whether this happens tomorrow or some years distant, it will happen—as we have said, the war is never over until our victory or our (and humankind’s) defeat—and when it does, the IRSM must not repeat the errors seen over and over in the ranks of traditional Irish republicans—whether in the form of Fianna Fail, the OIRA, or the PIRA—and allow their own cessation of struggle in arms to provide the basis for a general condemnation of sincere revolutionaries who continue on that path. In making its decision to decommission, the INLA was responding to specific, contemporary conditions and unique internal circumstances and it was fully within its rights to make such a decision. What the IRSM does not have a right to do, however, is to attempt to enforce its specific cease-fire and decommissioning on the movement as a whole. Any organisation who goes down that path (and you, dear reader, will no doubt call to mind the recent example of a party named Sinn Fein or a body called Dail Eireann) leaves the broad path of republicanism and republican socialism for the very narrow confines of serving as those responsible for administering the continued imperialist exploitation of Ireland. An organisation can cease the use of the tactic of armed struggle and remain a revolutionary organisation; but an organisation which assumes the tasks of policing on behalf of the imperialists becomes nothing but a component of the forces of reaction.
War is Brutal
Another lesson learned during the long and noble struggle in arms by republican socialists in Ireland is that waging the armed struggle often requires courage and dedication, such that those who are so engaged are deserving of respect and support. However, this does not diminish the fact that war is first and foremost a violent undertaking and therefore includes instances of brutality that make a poor model for the values revolutionary workers hold as socialists. This brutality is not caused by any flaw of character on the part of the volunteers engaged in armed struggle; rather it is inherent in the nature of warfare and is always present when human society is forced into armed combat in order to achieve a given objective. Those who are repulsed by such brutality have no reason to be ashamed; rather their repulsion makes clear their own humanity. However, those who react to the brutality of warfare by insisting that any recourse to violence is unjustified and indefensible are wrong and their advocacy of that position only serves the interests of the oppressors. It has long been said that it is better to die upon ones feet, than to live on ones knees and the validity of that statement is clear to anyone who embraces humanity. It is not the case that refusing to employ force bestows honour on those who take that position. Such a position can be responsible for allowing the weak to be brutalized, the masses to be exploited, for justice to be thwarted, and for freedom to be denied and there is nothing at all noble in such outcomes.
Accordingly, it must be understood that there are times when recourse to the struggle in arms is the nobler—and more effective—means forward. The capitalist media, which generally remains silent on the tens of thousands of instances of violence represented by injuries and deaths which occur in the workplace each year, remain silent regarding the torture of prisoners of war and prisoners in general, and who salute the troops serving the interests of imperialist exploitation endlessly with patriotic zeal never tire of sanctimoniously condemning revolutionaries struggling for justice. Their mantra is always, "the end cannot be used to justify the means,” and “violence can never be justified.” There is only one fitting response to such drivel: bullshit! The fact is, they constantly justify violence, degradation, and abuse of working people by pointing to the ends, in the form of the latest quarter’s profit margin. They erect endless monuments and sell endless poppies to honour those working class people who rather than fight for their own interests were duped into going abroad and slaughtering others just like themselves to serve the economic interests of the capitalist class. So, we must recognize these lies for what they are, but more importantly, we must avoid the trap of lending our voices to this apologist choir of capitalism.
A myriad of tiny parties making up the sectarian Left of the British Isles and North America never tire of trotting out their well-leafed pages of Comrade Lenin and telling us how wrong it is to engage in armed struggle (within a Western nation, anyway), because it is just like the ‘individual terrorism’ of the Narodniks that the Bolsheviks condemned. That some of them actually believe their own statements is merely sad, but the reality is something quite different. First (and readers may want to sit down, as I’m about to commit heresy), we are not living in Russia at the turn of the 20th Century or even in its second decade and it makes damned little difference what anyone thought of the Narodniks, even if their name was ‘Lenin’. Moreover, an organisation engaged in armed struggle against an occupying force of imperialism in no way resembles the tactics employed by some Russian anarchists in an earlier time. The Narodnik tactics were based on a theory of literally terrorizing the ruling class, through attacks on individual members of the ruling class. That the Bolsheviks opposed this tactical approach deserves applause and they would have earned even more applause had they, like the Irish communist James Connolly, rejected also the ideas of Blanc and Blanqui, which relied on conspiratorial organisation in waging war on the capitalist state and had been surpassed by the Marxist movement, who recognized that overthrowing capitalism could not be accomplished by a coup d’ etat, but required a social revolution undertaken, not by a party, but by the whole of the working class. While that discussion might have genuine interest in the context of a history class, it has little relevance for the contemporary revolutionary movement in Ireland.
However, if the sectarian Left parties are appalled by the violence of armed struggle, this is understandable. Anyone who is not appalled by acts of violence by one human being against another suffers from an impaired psyche, which capitalist society far too often creates. Those of us in the revolutionary movement should attempt to guard against the tendency to emulate the capitalist media in glorification of the capacity for destruction demonstrated by elements within the revolutionary movement. Being a good shot is an excellent skill for a revolutionary engaged in the armed struggle, we took justifiable pride in the IRSM in the tremendous innovation represented by the mercury-tilt trigger used in killing Airey Neave, and I well remember being proud of the INLA for the knowledge of architectural stability demonstrated by the Drop Inn Well bombing; but the ability of one of our volunteers to engaged in brutal and bloody carnage should not be the basis for celebration. Like many INLA volunteers over the years—Dessie O Hare and Crip McWilliams come readily to mind—some have the ability to steel themselves for the tasks that the struggle requires, but the best of them retain a profound humanity and gentleness of nature as well. The revolutionary movement ultimately must instill a fundamental concern for others amongst working people, because this will be required, both to encourage forward the movement to bring social justice and liberty and to aid in the construction of socialism, once the revolution has achieved its initial objectives. At the same time, the revolutionary movement cannot recoil from the violence that is necessary to set those positive, humane values into motion. “The revolution is not a dinner party,” Mao once said, and truer words were never spoken.
Money Corrupts
Akin to the realist appraisal of violence within the pursuit of the armed struggle and the sometimes impaired psyches that can unintentionally be attracted to the struggle, the revolutionary movement must confront the reality that the capitalist system perpetuates a morality that sacrifices all on the altar of personal enrichment and regardless of how it is obtained, money has the ability to corrupt. Working class people are not so lacking in intellect or understanding that they will condemn a volunteer engaged in the armed struggle for employing some of the skills cultivated in service to the revolutionary movement in order to make up for the financial opportunities lost as a result of having been incarcerated or unable to pursue ordinary career opportunities because the realities of the armed struggle require a higher degree of mobility and available time. They will, however, almost always hold the revolutionary movement as a whole responsible for the behavior of volunteers that sacrifices consideration of the broader social well-being for personal enrichment. As a result, the revolutionary movement can ill-afford members who are primarily interested in achieving personal wealth and use the revolutionary movement as a cloak of convenience to hide criminal activity serving no purpose other than their own gratification. If anyone in the movement believes that purity of purpose is all that is needed to ensure that a volunteer who obtains several hundred thousand Pounds or Euros in a fundraising activity undertaken for the movement, then they are hopelessly naïve. Members of our society each and every day engage in endless unsavory activities intended to add to someone’s personal wealth. They evict families from their homes, they deny food to the hungry, the restrict some of the things that most add pleasure to life to those with a certain level of income, they risk their own life and limbs in occupations that are horribly unsafe, and the list goes on and on. If all of that is true and the one thing underlying all of this fundamentally aberrant behavior is the quest for money; good intentions are not enough.
The revolutionary movement must therefore be prepared to defend actions that are necessary to ensure that volunteers engaged in the armed struggle and already facing the risk of death or incarceration are not also forced to spend their entire lives—and more importantly force their families to remain— in a state of abject poverty. Fundraising activities required to support the families of prisoners, the Prisoners of War themselves, legal costs involved in their defense when arrested, and costs associated with being actively engaged in armed struggle are all easily defended. What’s more, the movement should have no qualms about employing such means to provide the material needs of the political movement acting in the interests of working people to wage its campaigns in a manner that is effective within the confines of contemporary capitalist society. It must be remembered that the tremendous wealth used by members of the ruling class to provide themselves with a media outlet for their views, fund political campaigns, sustain themselves during labour disputes, and so forth is all originally created by the working class and expropriated from them through wage labor and surplus value. Simply put, the capitalists and the capitalist state are funded by theft from the working class; to steal some of that wealth back to be put into the service of the class who created the wealth in the first place isn’t simply defensible, it is the only rational means of proceeding and represents, in and of itself, a restoring of some level of justice within society. Those within the sectarian Left who relentlessly condemn or mock such activity within the revolutionary movement are doing nothing other than helping to promote the ideology of the capitalist system itself.
However, while all of the above is true, it does not alter the fact that members of our class are used to providing their own way through life through the often dreary and ill-compensated sale of their labour power and they are justified in having distain for leeches upon society, whether they be member of the capitalist class or members of the lumpen-proletariat. Knowing full well what they endure on a daily basis to gain the material necessities of life and what few joys may be wrung from the system as well, working class people are not well disposed towards those who expect to live without making any contribution to society—and that is true whether they are members of the capitalist class or other these highly regarded criminals. Over my years within the IRSM the thing most recurrently down-heartening has been becoming aware of times when INLA volunteers skimmed money raised for the movement for themselves or used gear belonging to the movement for their own benefit and the revolutionary movement must recognize the corrosive effect of such behavior and take all reasonable steps to see that it does not happen. This is not an unpleasant truth that the movement can afford to simply ignore; it must be discussed and a shared understanding must be arrived at as to what is necessary and therefore will be defended as needed and what is unacceptable and therefore will be dealt with as constituting an affront to our class as a whole. Those to whom one must turn to obtain weapons are not always those with whom one would most like to associate, but if they are the ones who have them, then there is little choice to be had. This being true, individual volunteers should not have to face social condemnation alone for doing what must be done in the larger interests of our class, but it is equally true that clear demarcation needs to be made regarding what types of interaction with such social elements will be tolerated. Furthermore, there is no room for the kind of stratification within the ranks of the underground revolutionary movement that we witness within capitalist entities. Because capitalism dictates that this or that individual is given a title and that title bestows upon them the right to be compensated better than others more essential to the business undertaking; it does not follow that those given recognition for their leadership abilities within the revolutionary movement are also able to assume that they somehow have earned a higher standard of living than the volunteers taking the same risks and making the same sacrifices in a rank-and-file capacity. Socialist ethics support the right of all, who contribute their labour power to the collective advancement of society to equally share in the wealth of society; they do not distinguish between those with the capacity to provide leadership and those who are not when determining what quality of life should be obtained and this is as true within the organisations of the revolutionary movement—legal or illegal—as anywhere else.
Bourgeois Respectability is Not Desirable for the Revolutionary Movement
During the many years that I was a member of the IRSM that the INLA were active, the political wing of the movement, the IRSP, was treated by the capitalist media and much of the sectarian Left as virtual lepers. The participation of one wing of the movement in the armed struggle was sufficient to gain the movement as a whole a reputation as a pariah. It was also true that during those years, this had the positive effect of ensuring that only those truly committed to revolutionary action remained within the ranks of the IRSP. The result of this was witnessed repeatedly at Ard Fheis after Ard Fheis, as the party’s rank-and-file membership could be counted upon to consistently support a programme that was unmistakably revolutionary. An excellent example of this is offered when the IRSP discussed how to approach participation in elections. The ranks of the party were in near universal agreement that they only way in which the IRSP should campaign for public office within the capitalist state was to acknowledge that nothing fundamentally of interest to the working class could be obtained through the capitalist parliaments and IRSP candidates should be encouraged to campaign on the basis that, if elected, IRSP candidates would seek to disrupt bourgeois ‘business as usual’, use their elected office to provide a means to empower working people to organise and work in their own interests, and would report back to the Irish workers on the machinations of capitalist politicians to undermine workers’ interests. The history of the socialist movement would be a great deal brighter if every party of the Left could have boasted such widespread support for such a policy in relation to parliamentary politics.
The conclusion that I drew from my experience within the IRSM was that the lack of respectability within the ranks of the capitalist media, the capitalist state apparatus, and the siphons of the sectarian Left served to spontaneously ensure the revolutionary character of the membership in a manner that all socialist organisations would benefit from obtaining. The working class struggle against the capitalist system is not only waged against the economic and political aspects of capitalism, but against the ideology of capitalism that permeates all aspects of society and inhibits the tendency towards class consciousness among members of the working class. If participation in a revolutionary party does not alarm the capitalist class and their lackeys and bring down relentless condemnation, that party cannot be acting effectively in its aim of destroying the capitalist system. Because nothing frightens the capitalists more than the idea of working people being prepared to confront them as equals, employing all methods at their disposal in their struggle, they reserve their worst abuse for those who represent an image of this threat to their system. Despite the small size and relative weakness of the IRSM, the fact that it openly declared its willingness to use all means to combat the capitalist system made them pariahs in the eyes of the bourgeoisie, just as was true of the Black Panther Party, or at another time the Industrial Workers of the World, in the United States.
There is an important lesson to be learned by the revolutionary movement from this experience. When the capitalists and their representatives are prepared to have you sit down for tea in Number 10 Downing Street or the White House; when the capitalist media finds your leaders fitting subjects for sympathetic articles in their publications; when a party’s consultation is sought on matters relating to the administration of capitalist society, whether it be the social welfare structure, taxation policy, or policing; it must be concluded that that party represents no threat to the established order by the ruling class. This is the same lesson inherent in employers’ attitudes towards the craft, ‘business’ unionism of the mainstream trade unions, as opposed to the hostility shown towards radical, industrial unionism. While some would seize upon these examples to argue that the more ‘respectable’ approach offered greater opportunity for success; it must be understood that any ‘success’ enabled is success that fails to challenge the stability of capitalism itself. If, as revolutionaries, we remain convinced that the interests of the working class cannot be achieved under the system of capitalism, we must conclude that such ‘effective’ respectability represents nothing more, at essence, than a failure to offer a genuine alternative capable of overthrowing the capitalist system.
Accordingly, the revolutionary movement cannot define itself in terms that reflect such bourgeois sensibilities. Revolutionaries have no interest in sitting down to negotiate with British imperialism or the subservient lackeys of the Irish Free State; they have no interest in winning the applause and accolades of the capitalist media; they have no interest in being admitted to the ‘polite society’ of capitalism. The interests of the revolutionary movement are to be able to strike terror in the hearts of the ruling class and prompt them to bar their doors to our entrance. When we obtain that reaction, then we can assess that we are pursuing a programme capable of accomplishing our goals: the overthrowing of the system of capitalism, to enable the working class to set about re-constructing society in a manner that reflects their own needs as a class. If any party of the Left distains to work alongside of republican socialists because they have been demonized in the black propaganda of the capitalist media and are likely to impede the cooperation of the institutions of capitalist society, that party has signaled that their objective is not the destruction of capitalism, but some reformist scheme aimed at increasing the number of crumbs the working class can obtain from the ruling class’s table. The time is long past for serious revolutionaries to embrace such values. The system of capitalism is capable of nothing less than the destruction of human civilization and the collapse of the environment on a global scale; it is inherently unstable and it is incapable of provide for social justice. Those seeking accommodation within its continued existence have lost their revolutionary will and have effectively surrendered and that is a crime far worse than decommissioning one paramilitary organisation’s stock of weapons.
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The recent decision by the Irish National Liberation Army to decommission its weapons provides occasion to draw some of the lessons learned in the more than 40 years that a republican socialist paramilitary body—either the INLA, since December 1974, or earlier the Official Irish Republican Army and Saor Eire—was active in waging armed struggle in Ireland. Learning these lessons is essential to ensuring that the path taken forward from this point in history does not falter and err and the need for ensuring that is all the greater now that world-wide capitalism has been exposed to still be reeling from the chaos intrinsic to that system.
The War is Never Over, Until We Succeed or CivilizationFalls
While any organisation has the right to call a halt to its own use of armed force, no organisation has either the right or the ability to call a halt to the use of armed force either within the national liberation or class struggle still be waged in Ireland. So long as British occupation continues to be a cause for sectarian social divisions in both the six and 26 county statelets of Ireland and that occupation and corresponding sectarians continues to result in a threat to the nationalist community of the six counties, there will be an armed struggle waged in Ireland. It may not be effective or well conducted; it may not enjoy broad popular support within the nationalist community; but it will continue. Moreover, the efforts of a nation oppressed and exploited by imperialism to end its occupation by a foreign entity through armed struggle must be defended, even by those who do not choose to employ the tactic of armed struggle at present. The republican socialist position on the use of arms, annunciated by the IRSP repeatedly, is that armed struggle is a tactical decision, not a matter of principles. The use of arms does not render a political entity ‘correct’, in and of itself and the ability to set aside the use of armed struggle for tactical reasons has long been the perspective of Irish republican socialists. However, in that the use of armed force is understood to be a tactical decision, its use cannot be reasonably declared ended for all time, because no one has the ability to anticipate the social conditions within which the struggle will be waged. Therefore, republican socialists, whether actively pursuing armed struggle, on cease-fire, or decommissioned must continue to defend the right of the Irish working class to choose the tactic of armed struggle in its fight against British imperialism.
Further, because the State always has a specific class character—that of the ruling class—the working class cannot permit the State to maintain a monopoly on the use of armed force. To the extent that the bourgeois State can be pressured to reduce its own reliance on armed force (prohibition of capital punishment, unarmed police patrols, neutrality and foregoing the maintenance of a standing army, etc.), the working class can also refrain for the use of armed force to some extent, for the purpose of ensuring social conditions that are most conducive to working people feeling free from threat and in which reason, rather than brute force, can be employed as a method of struggle. That, however, is not the present circumstance in Ireland, either in the six or 26 counties. Instead, both the Free State and the British government maintain standing armies on the island of Ireland and armed police operate throughout all 32 counties; and the governments of the six and 26 counties have both shown their willingness to use brute force to quash demonstrations, break strikes, pursue international policy decisions, repress republican and socialist activists, and so forth. Thus the Irish working class would be nothing less than irresponsible, were it to deny itself the same tactical options available to its class enemies. How extra-legal force might be used in pursuit of the class struggle on a day-to-day basis will be explored in greater depth later, but at present it must simply be reiterated that any political organisation presenting itself as operating in accordance with the revolutionary needs of Irish workers in their fight with the British imperialists, native capitalists, and the States which operate to serve their interests must recognize that class struggle is the motive force in human history and that struggle necessitates that the working class seek to stand on, at least, level ground when it confronts its class rivals and that means force used by the State must be opposed with force by the working class.
The Class Struggle and National Liberation Struggle in Ireland are Inseparable
The header used above forms the very core of what is known as a ‘republican socialist’ analysis in Ireland. From Fintan Lalor, through J.P. McDonnell of the First International; to Connolly and Larkin, Peadar O Donnell, Seamus Costello, and Gino Gallagher down to the present day, the republican socialist position has been distinguished on the basis of recognizing the inseparability of the class and national struggles in Ireland. Because this is true, the national liberation struggle cannot be waged distinctly from the class struggle.
The traditional republican strategy, employed by the Provisional IRA and now being pursued by the Continuity IRA, Real IRA, and Oglaich na Eireann is the pursuit of armed struggle with the intention of forcing the British government to the negotiating table, where Irish independence and 32-county unity can be achieved. From a republican socialist perspective, this is a strategy which cannot but fail. Irish national liberation can only be achieved through the liberation of the Irish working class from capitalist exploitation, because discussion of national liberation while the vast majority of the nation’s residents remain oppressed and unfree is an absurdity and because in the era of imperialism, no small capitalist nation is capable of pursuing an agenda designed to serve the interests of that nation, because the interests of the ruling class are directly tied to the interests of the ruling classes of the imperialist nations. Simply put, the British and Irish governments are not going to—now, tomorrow, or ever—sit down with representatives of the revolutionary forces in Ireland and negotiate the creation of a socialist republic. Moreover, Irish republican socialists have been clear in stating repeatedly over the course of decades that there can be no stagist approach to the Irish revolutionary struggle—it is not a case of ‘first national liberation, then socialism’ nor of ‘first socialist revolution, then national liberation’; Irish national liberation can be achieved only through the establishment of a 32-county Irish workers’ republic.
Because republican socialists understand this to be the case, the manner in which they should employ the use of arms or extra-legal force should be very different from traditional republicans; as an old friend and comrade recently said to me regarding the history of the IRSM: “We should have been fighting the class war.”
To some extent, the IRSM did just that and, when I was serving as the North American Coordinator of the IRSCNA and Co-International Secretary of the IRSP, I frequently drew upon the examples of the Mt. Gabriel radar station bombing (which had exposed the Free State violating its declared neutrality to provide intelligence to NATO), the hoax bombing used to disrupt a football match featuring a team from the Zionist state (which was intended to both “normalise” the image of the six counties and create an opening for the Zionists in international sports, which they had been excluded from due to political boycotts), the Dunnes store bombing done in support of the anti-apartheid struggle, and the hijacking of a bread van and the distribution of its contents to the working poor of Dublin (after the Free State removed its bread subsidies). All of these actions were generally well received by Irish workers and served to aid in the development of class consciousness; but as time went on, it became increasing obvious that these were only a few of the INLA’s actions and they had mostly occurred in the 1980s. The assassination of Airey Neave, the Drop-in Well bombing, the killing of John McKeage and Billy Wright were all fully defensible actions that served the class struggle through defense of nationalist workers from sectarian death squads, targeting of political figures likely to aid the reactionary cause, or support to the national liberation struggle and, as such, should have been undertaken by the INLA. However, actions with clear roots in the class struggle and which, to the extent possible, avoid the spilling of blood unless it serves a clear and immediate purpose were the kind of actions that only the INLA was suited to carry out and because only they were suited to the task, far too few such actions can be found in the 36 years of its history, prior to decommissioning.
Such clearly defined class war actions are not a diversion from the national liberation struggle; they are an integral element of the national liberation struggle. Again, that is because the reality of the struggle for national liberation in Ireland is that it is inseparable from the class struggle. Actions such as those described above assist Irish working people to enhance the class consciousness, aid Irish workers in grasping the importance of being prepared to employ revolutionary force to combat the state and the capitalist class it represents, and help to overcome the sectarian divide within the Irish working class by demonstrating that those engaged in the national liberation struggle embrace values that are meaningful to Protestant workers because of their own interests as members of the working class. Moreover, they accomplish these essential tasks of the Irish revolution far better than does another bombing disruption of the Dublin/Belfast rail link or the assassination of a random British soldier, who has probably never considered his role in supporting the continuation of imperialist exploitation of Ireland.
Accordingly, it this kind of action that should continue. It is not necessary that the revolutionaries engaged in such actions organise themselves into a body identified as the Irish National Liberation Army, or any other name. It is not essential that such actions be “claimed.” It is essential, however, that they continue. Ideally, the INLA would have remained fully underground, as had been intended at the time it was formed, on the same day the Irish Republican Socialist Party came into being. It was only because of the reactionary violence initiated by the OIRA against the newly formed IRSM that necessitated the acknowledgement of an armed wing of that movement and, even then, this was initially masked behind the “People’s Liberation Army” name. In those days, when the INLA introduced the basic three-volunteer cell structure that enabled them to withstand the onslaught of the British tactics such as the “hooded men” and various other elements of torture employed in the mid-1970s, the INLA understood that an underground organisation functions best when it is furthest underground. It was the model of traditional republicanism, not the innovations of the Republican Socialist Movement that resulted in the INLA assuming a posture far more closely related to the PIRA and the lesson of those times is essential to be learned: every revolutionary organisation should have both legal and illegal apparatus, but the illegal apparatus should function underground, where its activities are hardest for the British imperialists and Free State lackeys to identify and infiltrate them.
In this, the environmental activists of North America and internationally have provided a useful model. While the US FBI drones endlessly on about the threat that exists from the Animal Liberation Front and Environmental Liberation Front, their statements hide the reality that no such entities exist, in the sense recognized by Irish republicans. Rather, small teams of revolutionary activists employ those monikers as terms of convenience when carrying out illegal actions; but there is no ALF or ELF ‘Chief of Staff’ or ‘Army Council’. There is only the threatening shadow of an organisation, whose continued success is enhanced by the inability of state intelligence forces to identify structures, leadership, and membership. Were there a new campaigned aimed at combating the assault on Irish workers in the six counties represented by the efforts to privatise and charge for water—in addition to the already existing charges that have existed for years within the structure of rates—those responsible for destroying water meters; seizing, over-turning, and setting fire to the vans used by those reading those meters; or issuing threats against the RUC/PSNI should they attempt to make arrests based on refusal of working people to pay water charges; they might seize upon the wonderful name created by Welsh revolutionaries in the early 1980s and call themselves the ‘Workers’ Army of the Irish Republic’ (the Workers’ Army of the Welsh Republic had the added advantage that their acronym, WAWR, is the Welsh word for “dawn”, but no one should try to match the Welsh in their command of poetics) or the Army of the Irish Workers’ Republic. If they do (no credit need be given), they should first understand that it is not necessary that doing so first requires the holding of a founding Army Convention and the establishment of a leadership chain of command; they need only be self-consciously acting in concert with the aspirations of an Irish republican socialist movement. Organisations that lack formal organizational structures are organisations that the intelligence forces of British imperialism and Free State comprador capitalism cannot infiltrate and disrupt, but they are no less adept at providing a means for enhancing working class consciousness among Irish workers and serving as an effective means of combating an anti-working class campaign, such as the drive to privatise water resources represents.
Moreover, this is by no means the only current social struggle that lends itself to the use of armed force. In the 1970s the Italian Red Brigades provided useful support to striking Fiat workers with their weapons and every instance where there is an attempt to break a strike with scab labour provides another such opportunity. The actions of the masses in Haiti and Chile in the wake of their deadly earthquakes in seizing supplies necessary to workers’ survival illustrates another such example and was foreshadowed in the 1980s INLA bread van hijacking in Dublin. Where there are slum lords preying upon working people, there is an opportunity for such actions. Where working class women and children are made the victims of domestic violence, there are such opportunities. Where immigrant workers from Eastern Europe or Africa in Ireland, or Travelers, are subjected to racist attack and intimidation, there are such opportunities. Whenever and wherever social need makes evident the righteousness of immediate redistribution of wealth, not through government programs but through the manner popularized by that worthy Englishman, Robin Hood, such opportunities exist.
Republican socialists are either revolutionaries or they are nothing. When I first inquired of the IRSM’s leadership about the relationship between the party and the army, I was told that any member of the former would be expected to understand the necessity of armed struggle in Ireland and any member of the latter would be expected to understand the necessity of organised political action. I didn’t require a translator to understand what I was being told and that remained my guiding principle throughout my over two-decades within the IRSM. Because of the essential correctness of that perspective, it can naturally be presumed that a republican socialist party would be able and prepared to annunciate the goals and aspirations of activists engaged in illegal activity in support of working class needs and to provide rhetorical support for those engaged in such activities in their press and party statements; thereby rendering it unnecessary for the actual activist who carried out the illegal actions to emerge from the underground to issue press statements. By enabling those activists to remain underground, the efforts of the political organisation also provide them with essential protection from the efforts of the state intelligence forces to crush them.
Since the INLA has chosen to decommission its weapons, it has necessitated that other revolutionaries will step into the breach and to provide the forms of struggle the working class has always had occasion to employ. Whether this happens tomorrow or some years distant, it will happen—as we have said, the war is never over until our victory or our (and humankind’s) defeat—and when it does, the IRSM must not repeat the errors seen over and over in the ranks of traditional Irish republicans—whether in the form of Fianna Fail, the OIRA, or the PIRA—and allow their own cessation of struggle in arms to provide the basis for a general condemnation of sincere revolutionaries who continue on that path. In making its decision to decommission, the INLA was responding to specific, contemporary conditions and unique internal circumstances and it was fully within its rights to make such a decision. What the IRSM does not have a right to do, however, is to attempt to enforce its specific cease-fire and decommissioning on the movement as a whole. Any organisation who goes down that path (and you, dear reader, will no doubt call to mind the recent example of a party named Sinn Fein or a body called Dail Eireann) leaves the broad path of republicanism and republican socialism for the very narrow confines of serving as those responsible for administering the continued imperialist exploitation of Ireland. An organisation can cease the use of the tactic of armed struggle and remain a revolutionary organisation; but an organisation which assumes the tasks of policing on behalf of the imperialists becomes nothing but a component of the forces of reaction.
War is Brutal
Another lesson learned during the long and noble struggle in arms by republican socialists in Ireland is that waging the armed struggle often requires courage and dedication, such that those who are so engaged are deserving of respect and support. However, this does not diminish the fact that war is first and foremost a violent undertaking and therefore includes instances of brutality that make a poor model for the values revolutionary workers hold as socialists. This brutality is not caused by any flaw of character on the part of the volunteers engaged in armed struggle; rather it is inherent in the nature of warfare and is always present when human society is forced into armed combat in order to achieve a given objective. Those who are repulsed by such brutality have no reason to be ashamed; rather their repulsion makes clear their own humanity. However, those who react to the brutality of warfare by insisting that any recourse to violence is unjustified and indefensible are wrong and their advocacy of that position only serves the interests of the oppressors. It has long been said that it is better to die upon ones feet, than to live on ones knees and the validity of that statement is clear to anyone who embraces humanity. It is not the case that refusing to employ force bestows honour on those who take that position. Such a position can be responsible for allowing the weak to be brutalized, the masses to be exploited, for justice to be thwarted, and for freedom to be denied and there is nothing at all noble in such outcomes.
Accordingly, it must be understood that there are times when recourse to the struggle in arms is the nobler—and more effective—means forward. The capitalist media, which generally remains silent on the tens of thousands of instances of violence represented by injuries and deaths which occur in the workplace each year, remain silent regarding the torture of prisoners of war and prisoners in general, and who salute the troops serving the interests of imperialist exploitation endlessly with patriotic zeal never tire of sanctimoniously condemning revolutionaries struggling for justice. Their mantra is always, "the end cannot be used to justify the means,” and “violence can never be justified.” There is only one fitting response to such drivel: bullshit! The fact is, they constantly justify violence, degradation, and abuse of working people by pointing to the ends, in the form of the latest quarter’s profit margin. They erect endless monuments and sell endless poppies to honour those working class people who rather than fight for their own interests were duped into going abroad and slaughtering others just like themselves to serve the economic interests of the capitalist class. So, we must recognize these lies for what they are, but more importantly, we must avoid the trap of lending our voices to this apologist choir of capitalism.
A myriad of tiny parties making up the sectarian Left of the British Isles and North America never tire of trotting out their well-leafed pages of Comrade Lenin and telling us how wrong it is to engage in armed struggle (within a Western nation, anyway), because it is just like the ‘individual terrorism’ of the Narodniks that the Bolsheviks condemned. That some of them actually believe their own statements is merely sad, but the reality is something quite different. First (and readers may want to sit down, as I’m about to commit heresy), we are not living in Russia at the turn of the 20th Century or even in its second decade and it makes damned little difference what anyone thought of the Narodniks, even if their name was ‘Lenin’. Moreover, an organisation engaged in armed struggle against an occupying force of imperialism in no way resembles the tactics employed by some Russian anarchists in an earlier time. The Narodnik tactics were based on a theory of literally terrorizing the ruling class, through attacks on individual members of the ruling class. That the Bolsheviks opposed this tactical approach deserves applause and they would have earned even more applause had they, like the Irish communist James Connolly, rejected also the ideas of Blanc and Blanqui, which relied on conspiratorial organisation in waging war on the capitalist state and had been surpassed by the Marxist movement, who recognized that overthrowing capitalism could not be accomplished by a coup d’ etat, but required a social revolution undertaken, not by a party, but by the whole of the working class. While that discussion might have genuine interest in the context of a history class, it has little relevance for the contemporary revolutionary movement in Ireland.
However, if the sectarian Left parties are appalled by the violence of armed struggle, this is understandable. Anyone who is not appalled by acts of violence by one human being against another suffers from an impaired psyche, which capitalist society far too often creates. Those of us in the revolutionary movement should attempt to guard against the tendency to emulate the capitalist media in glorification of the capacity for destruction demonstrated by elements within the revolutionary movement. Being a good shot is an excellent skill for a revolutionary engaged in the armed struggle, we took justifiable pride in the IRSM in the tremendous innovation represented by the mercury-tilt trigger used in killing Airey Neave, and I well remember being proud of the INLA for the knowledge of architectural stability demonstrated by the Drop Inn Well bombing; but the ability of one of our volunteers to engaged in brutal and bloody carnage should not be the basis for celebration. Like many INLA volunteers over the years—Dessie O Hare and Crip McWilliams come readily to mind—some have the ability to steel themselves for the tasks that the struggle requires, but the best of them retain a profound humanity and gentleness of nature as well. The revolutionary movement ultimately must instill a fundamental concern for others amongst working people, because this will be required, both to encourage forward the movement to bring social justice and liberty and to aid in the construction of socialism, once the revolution has achieved its initial objectives. At the same time, the revolutionary movement cannot recoil from the violence that is necessary to set those positive, humane values into motion. “The revolution is not a dinner party,” Mao once said, and truer words were never spoken.
Money Corrupts
Akin to the realist appraisal of violence within the pursuit of the armed struggle and the sometimes impaired psyches that can unintentionally be attracted to the struggle, the revolutionary movement must confront the reality that the capitalist system perpetuates a morality that sacrifices all on the altar of personal enrichment and regardless of how it is obtained, money has the ability to corrupt. Working class people are not so lacking in intellect or understanding that they will condemn a volunteer engaged in the armed struggle for employing some of the skills cultivated in service to the revolutionary movement in order to make up for the financial opportunities lost as a result of having been incarcerated or unable to pursue ordinary career opportunities because the realities of the armed struggle require a higher degree of mobility and available time. They will, however, almost always hold the revolutionary movement as a whole responsible for the behavior of volunteers that sacrifices consideration of the broader social well-being for personal enrichment. As a result, the revolutionary movement can ill-afford members who are primarily interested in achieving personal wealth and use the revolutionary movement as a cloak of convenience to hide criminal activity serving no purpose other than their own gratification. If anyone in the movement believes that purity of purpose is all that is needed to ensure that a volunteer who obtains several hundred thousand Pounds or Euros in a fundraising activity undertaken for the movement, then they are hopelessly naïve. Members of our society each and every day engage in endless unsavory activities intended to add to someone’s personal wealth. They evict families from their homes, they deny food to the hungry, the restrict some of the things that most add pleasure to life to those with a certain level of income, they risk their own life and limbs in occupations that are horribly unsafe, and the list goes on and on. If all of that is true and the one thing underlying all of this fundamentally aberrant behavior is the quest for money; good intentions are not enough.
The revolutionary movement must therefore be prepared to defend actions that are necessary to ensure that volunteers engaged in the armed struggle and already facing the risk of death or incarceration are not also forced to spend their entire lives—and more importantly force their families to remain— in a state of abject poverty. Fundraising activities required to support the families of prisoners, the Prisoners of War themselves, legal costs involved in their defense when arrested, and costs associated with being actively engaged in armed struggle are all easily defended. What’s more, the movement should have no qualms about employing such means to provide the material needs of the political movement acting in the interests of working people to wage its campaigns in a manner that is effective within the confines of contemporary capitalist society. It must be remembered that the tremendous wealth used by members of the ruling class to provide themselves with a media outlet for their views, fund political campaigns, sustain themselves during labour disputes, and so forth is all originally created by the working class and expropriated from them through wage labor and surplus value. Simply put, the capitalists and the capitalist state are funded by theft from the working class; to steal some of that wealth back to be put into the service of the class who created the wealth in the first place isn’t simply defensible, it is the only rational means of proceeding and represents, in and of itself, a restoring of some level of justice within society. Those within the sectarian Left who relentlessly condemn or mock such activity within the revolutionary movement are doing nothing other than helping to promote the ideology of the capitalist system itself.
However, while all of the above is true, it does not alter the fact that members of our class are used to providing their own way through life through the often dreary and ill-compensated sale of their labour power and they are justified in having distain for leeches upon society, whether they be member of the capitalist class or members of the lumpen-proletariat. Knowing full well what they endure on a daily basis to gain the material necessities of life and what few joys may be wrung from the system as well, working class people are not well disposed towards those who expect to live without making any contribution to society—and that is true whether they are members of the capitalist class or other these highly regarded criminals. Over my years within the IRSM the thing most recurrently down-heartening has been becoming aware of times when INLA volunteers skimmed money raised for the movement for themselves or used gear belonging to the movement for their own benefit and the revolutionary movement must recognize the corrosive effect of such behavior and take all reasonable steps to see that it does not happen. This is not an unpleasant truth that the movement can afford to simply ignore; it must be discussed and a shared understanding must be arrived at as to what is necessary and therefore will be defended as needed and what is unacceptable and therefore will be dealt with as constituting an affront to our class as a whole. Those to whom one must turn to obtain weapons are not always those with whom one would most like to associate, but if they are the ones who have them, then there is little choice to be had. This being true, individual volunteers should not have to face social condemnation alone for doing what must be done in the larger interests of our class, but it is equally true that clear demarcation needs to be made regarding what types of interaction with such social elements will be tolerated. Furthermore, there is no room for the kind of stratification within the ranks of the underground revolutionary movement that we witness within capitalist entities. Because capitalism dictates that this or that individual is given a title and that title bestows upon them the right to be compensated better than others more essential to the business undertaking; it does not follow that those given recognition for their leadership abilities within the revolutionary movement are also able to assume that they somehow have earned a higher standard of living than the volunteers taking the same risks and making the same sacrifices in a rank-and-file capacity. Socialist ethics support the right of all, who contribute their labour power to the collective advancement of society to equally share in the wealth of society; they do not distinguish between those with the capacity to provide leadership and those who are not when determining what quality of life should be obtained and this is as true within the organisations of the revolutionary movement—legal or illegal—as anywhere else.
Bourgeois Respectability is Not Desirable for the Revolutionary Movement
During the many years that I was a member of the IRSM that the INLA were active, the political wing of the movement, the IRSP, was treated by the capitalist media and much of the sectarian Left as virtual lepers. The participation of one wing of the movement in the armed struggle was sufficient to gain the movement as a whole a reputation as a pariah. It was also true that during those years, this had the positive effect of ensuring that only those truly committed to revolutionary action remained within the ranks of the IRSP. The result of this was witnessed repeatedly at Ard Fheis after Ard Fheis, as the party’s rank-and-file membership could be counted upon to consistently support a programme that was unmistakably revolutionary. An excellent example of this is offered when the IRSP discussed how to approach participation in elections. The ranks of the party were in near universal agreement that they only way in which the IRSP should campaign for public office within the capitalist state was to acknowledge that nothing fundamentally of interest to the working class could be obtained through the capitalist parliaments and IRSP candidates should be encouraged to campaign on the basis that, if elected, IRSP candidates would seek to disrupt bourgeois ‘business as usual’, use their elected office to provide a means to empower working people to organise and work in their own interests, and would report back to the Irish workers on the machinations of capitalist politicians to undermine workers’ interests. The history of the socialist movement would be a great deal brighter if every party of the Left could have boasted such widespread support for such a policy in relation to parliamentary politics.
The conclusion that I drew from my experience within the IRSM was that the lack of respectability within the ranks of the capitalist media, the capitalist state apparatus, and the siphons of the sectarian Left served to spontaneously ensure the revolutionary character of the membership in a manner that all socialist organisations would benefit from obtaining. The working class struggle against the capitalist system is not only waged against the economic and political aspects of capitalism, but against the ideology of capitalism that permeates all aspects of society and inhibits the tendency towards class consciousness among members of the working class. If participation in a revolutionary party does not alarm the capitalist class and their lackeys and bring down relentless condemnation, that party cannot be acting effectively in its aim of destroying the capitalist system. Because nothing frightens the capitalists more than the idea of working people being prepared to confront them as equals, employing all methods at their disposal in their struggle, they reserve their worst abuse for those who represent an image of this threat to their system. Despite the small size and relative weakness of the IRSM, the fact that it openly declared its willingness to use all means to combat the capitalist system made them pariahs in the eyes of the bourgeoisie, just as was true of the Black Panther Party, or at another time the Industrial Workers of the World, in the United States.
There is an important lesson to be learned by the revolutionary movement from this experience. When the capitalists and their representatives are prepared to have you sit down for tea in Number 10 Downing Street or the White House; when the capitalist media finds your leaders fitting subjects for sympathetic articles in their publications; when a party’s consultation is sought on matters relating to the administration of capitalist society, whether it be the social welfare structure, taxation policy, or policing; it must be concluded that that party represents no threat to the established order by the ruling class. This is the same lesson inherent in employers’ attitudes towards the craft, ‘business’ unionism of the mainstream trade unions, as opposed to the hostility shown towards radical, industrial unionism. While some would seize upon these examples to argue that the more ‘respectable’ approach offered greater opportunity for success; it must be understood that any ‘success’ enabled is success that fails to challenge the stability of capitalism itself. If, as revolutionaries, we remain convinced that the interests of the working class cannot be achieved under the system of capitalism, we must conclude that such ‘effective’ respectability represents nothing more, at essence, than a failure to offer a genuine alternative capable of overthrowing the capitalist system.
Accordingly, the revolutionary movement cannot define itself in terms that reflect such bourgeois sensibilities. Revolutionaries have no interest in sitting down to negotiate with British imperialism or the subservient lackeys of the Irish Free State; they have no interest in winning the applause and accolades of the capitalist media; they have no interest in being admitted to the ‘polite society’ of capitalism. The interests of the revolutionary movement are to be able to strike terror in the hearts of the ruling class and prompt them to bar their doors to our entrance. When we obtain that reaction, then we can assess that we are pursuing a programme capable of accomplishing our goals: the overthrowing of the system of capitalism, to enable the working class to set about re-constructing society in a manner that reflects their own needs as a class. If any party of the Left distains to work alongside of republican socialists because they have been demonized in the black propaganda of the capitalist media and are likely to impede the cooperation of the institutions of capitalist society, that party has signaled that their objective is not the destruction of capitalism, but some reformist scheme aimed at increasing the number of crumbs the working class can obtain from the ruling class’s table. The time is long past for serious revolutionaries to embrace such values. The system of capitalism is capable of nothing less than the destruction of human civilization and the collapse of the environment on a global scale; it is inherently unstable and it is incapable of provide for social justice. Those seeking accommodation within its continued existence have lost their revolutionary will and have effectively surrendered and that is a crime far worse than decommissioning one paramilitary organisation’s stock of weapons.
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